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How to Be Consistent With Ease [5 Powerful Hacks]

Consistency is the key to success in any are of your life.

If you never learn how to be consistent and disciplined, you’ll never achieve any measure of success in your business or your personal life.

So why are some people experts at consistency while others struggle?

Can you develop consistency and learn to be consistently consistent?… (get it?… it’s a play on words… it’s, ah, well… nevermind).

The good new is that while we all struggle in different areas of our life, typically there are a few areas we may be super consistent in.
These areas are just different for different people.

But the question remains, what if you want to be consistent in an area you’re struggling in? Is it even possible or is it an exercise in futility?

The short answer is ‘yes, it’s very possible for everyone if they follow our 5-Step Consistency Formula.

The longer answer is a little more extensive and I’ll be breaking it down for you one piece at a time.

Then I’ll teach you how to easily be consistent in any area of life you want to create results in by using a simple formula anyone can do.

In fact, if you follow the strategies I’m about to lay out, it will get to the point where it’s hard to NOT be consistent.

I know that’s a tall order, but stick with me and you may be surprised at what you learn and how easy it is to implement.

I’ll give you hint, the key to consistency… is human psychology.

So What is Consistency Anyway?

The best way to understand consistency is to go back to it’s roots.

When we talk about the consistency of a material or substance (such as a liquid), we’re talking about the way it holds together, sticks together, or bonds together.

Is it thin, thick, gooey, sticky, etc.?

The consistency of gummy candy is much different than the consistency of taffy or even hard candy.

Keep those images in mind and try to follow my thinking here (who would have thunk… food examples work for anything).

When we’re talking about action or about being consistent, we’re still talking about the way something bonds together.

But instead of talking about a substance, we’re talking about a plan.

For example, if you’re plan is to workout everyday, you will need to do that everyday (since your plan is everyday).

Everyday… means every day.

If it’s to work out 5x a week, it means 5x a week.

If someone asks you if you’re being consistent with anything, it means:

How’s your plan holding together?
How are you doing in your implementation?
Is it still holding together?
Or did it fall apart on day 2?

Wanna Know How to Be Consistent?
(Hack Your Psychology)

Consistency is not about will power, it’s about manipulated will power.

I already mentioned that the secret lies in human psychology, so we’re going to explore how to hack your psychology.

It’s like Jedi mind tricks you use on yourself.

Implement the steps below (in this order) and you’ll create powerful and compounding results.

If you put all these pieces in place you’re psychology will be hacked by default and your consistency will skyrocket.

Consistency Hack #1: Use SMART Goals

To be consistent, you need to know exactly what you’re shooting for.

To do this, you need to establish a goal that you will link a behavior to.

Vague goals are not goals at all, they’re hopes.

Hope is NOT a strategy.

Hope is NOT a strategy. #success #goals Click To Tweet

If you’ve read much about goals, you’ve probably heard of SMART goals.

SMART is an acronym for a formula on how to write good goals.

If you have a SMART goal, it means your goal is:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-Bound

For example, if your goal is just to “lose weight”, you haven’t hit the elements of a SMART goal.

How do you measure it?

A better goal would be “I want to lose 15 lbs. in the next 15 weeks”.

It’s Specific and Measurable (how much will be lost)
It’s Achievable (1 pound per week)
It’s Realistic (not trying to lose 30 lbs. in 3 weeks)
It’s Time-Bound (15 weeks)

Being specific like this will help you be more consistent because you can see exactly what you’re shooting for.

Hack #2: Write Your Goals Down

I won’t spend too much time here because this post is about consistency, but if you want to be more consistent you first have to do a few things in order to set yourself up for success.

One of those things is writing your goals down on paper.

Don’t just think through the SMART Goal Formula, make sure you bust out your best pen and paper and actually write those goals down!

Michael Hyatt wrote a great article about why writing down goals is important.

I won’t go into it all here, but rest assured, it needs to be part of the process if you actually want success.

You probably already know that, but have you actually taken action on it and wrote them down?

Hack #3: Track Activity, Not Outcomes

This hack comes from Ray Higdon.

He has some great common sense stuff about prospecting and recruiting.

But that’s neither here nor there, I just wanted to give credit where credit is due.

The example I used earlier was about losing weight.

But is the goal to just lose weight, or to keep it off?

Once you’ve figured out your specific goal, you need to create a habit or behavior that aligns with that goal and will get you there (and keep you there).

Consistency is about lifestyle change.

You’re essentially implementing a behavior or activity that will get you to your goal.

Once you have your goal, you’ll create at least one action or activity you’ll do everyday to get you there.

Then you’ll track it.

Everyday is a key component of this and we’ll unpack it a little more in the next section.

In the example above, you want to lose a specific amount of weight.

The question is how?
What strategy or strategies will you use?

Here are some examples of what might work if weight loss was your goal.
1) Keep carbs under 50 per day
2) Do cardio exercise 30-60 minutes per day
3) Cut out all processed foods
4) Workout (with weights) everyday

There are all kinds of options you could use depending on your goals.
The more options you implement, the better your results will be.

The key with this hack is the activity you track must be achievable and measurable on a daily basis.

If you just did the SMART goal, you’d hit a wall.
You know what you want, but how do you get there?

The answer is this hack… you measure specific activity (not the outcome) that gets you to your goal.

If you focus on consistently taking action, you’ll get to your desired outcome.

Let’s continue using the weight loss example and assume you picked to track the activities below:

  1. Keeping carbs under 50 per day
  2. Walking for 30 minutes everyday.

Whatever activity you come up with related to your SMART goal, this is what you’ll measure when you begin building your consistency chain (which is the next hack).

How to Be Consistent Hack #4:
The Consistency Chain

This concept is easily the most powerful concept I’ve implemented and it was by sheer accident.

It wasn’t until just recently while listening to a podcast that I found out it has a name and even a book to go with it. The book is called… The Consistency Chain (surprise-surprise-surprise).

The concept and idea behind it is simple.

Everyday that you successfully take your desired action you have just created a link on your daily consistency chain.

The more links you have in the chain, the stronger and more consistent your behavior will be.

You’ll want to use a calendar or an app or something simple to track it that works for you.

I use an app called “Done”.

It allows you to put in custom actions you want to track (like a to-do list).

Then you can see stats on your activity.
It’s free and simple to use.

app for tracking prospecting activity

Each activity you’re tracking is it’s own chain.

Take another look at our examples above, they were:

  1. Keep carbs under 50 per day
  2. Walk 30 minutes per day.

So on the first day you keep carbs under 50, you’ve create a link in your consistency chain.

You would mark off a day on the calendar or track it on your app.

If you’re using a calendar, you can highlight the day, put a check in it, put a code like “c” for carbs or “<50”.

Use something to indicate that you met your own performance expectations for that day.

You’d do the same thing for walking 30 minutes a day.

Then you just mark it off each and every day that you do it and see how long you can go without missing a day.

It’s that simple, but don’t underestimate how powerful it can be.

This is the Jedi mind trick and you’re using it on yourself. As your chain gets longer you’ll build momentum.

What makes this hack so powerful is the psychological aspect of it.

You aren’t committing to walk 30 minutes a day for 30 days.

You’re really only making a commitment to be consistent for 1 day… and then try to do it again… and again.

It builds up your confidence slowly over time and breaks your large goals into daily activity that will get you there.

The longer you go, the stronger your commitment will be to “not break the chain” and the higher your confidence in your ability will grow.

Wise Consistency Chain Building

You don’t want to pick an activity level that you know you won’t be able to keep up with.

But you also don’t want to pick something so easy that you’re not pushing yourself or that will create slow results.

You must push yourself.

Think about it this way, if you want to make more sales, maybe your activity goal is to make 20 cold calls a day.

If you know you can do this without a problem, shoot for more.

If you make 20 calls a day for 100 days straight (because it’s soooo easy for you), you will have made 2,000 calls in 100 days.

But if you know you’ll hit 20 with no problem and you decide to go for 25, you’ll hit 2,500 every 100 days. That’s 500 calls more just by adding an extra 5 calls to your daily activity.

If you’re closing percentage is just 1% (hopefully it’s more), you’ll close an extra 5 sales in that time period.

Picking an achievable (but challenging) activity goal can mean the difference between hitting your goals quickly, slowly, or not at all.

Hack #5: Know When to Track Stats

What do you do when you break the consistency chain?

Inevitably, you will break the chain. Some of it will depend on how easy it is to hit your daily target.

Some of those breaks will occur because life happened.

Recently, I had a bunch of random things happen at around the same time.

A kid with a broken arm (which required surgery), another kid with an issue that took time to unwind, my wife got a flat from a screw she ran over, as well as a few other random things.

The result, unfortunately, was that one of my consistency chains for a goal I have was broken.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t willing to take the action, it’s just that life happened.

I could choose to throw in the towel or beat myself up because I went so long without breaking it… OR… I could keep it going and just keep stats.

What do I mean by “keep stats”?

Well, before you break a consistency chain, you have a running tally.

If you’re goal was to exercise everyday, it might be 165 days of exercise.

When you break that chain, most people have a lapse in willpower and start slacking because they don’t want to start over.

A better Jedi Mind Trick is to just switch over to keeping stats.

If you know you’re keeping ongoing stats, you’ll be more likely to start again the next day and continue being consistent.

That way, at the end of a year you can look back at your stats and see that you were consistent on your goal 357 out of 365 days (or whatever your number is).

Over time, you’ll even be able to stop tracking the activity because your psychology will be officially hacked.

When that happens, you’ll know it because missing a day will bring you stress and you’ll be eager to start back again the day after you missed.

The Consistency Chain Reinforced
(Multiple Cords Strategy)

If you want to make your chain stronger and get even better results, try to create multiple chains toward the same goal.

I call this the Multiple Cords Strategy.

Think of it as weaving or braiding multiple chains together.

The Book of Ecclesiastes says “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”  (4:12)

Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. -Ecclesiastes 4:12 Click To Tweet

The more “cords” you have in your chain, the stronger it will be.

This is an analogy, but imagine you’re about to rappel off of a skyscraper.

Wouldn’t you want to use a cord or rope that is reinforced with multiple cords?

Of course you would.

It spreads out the points of failure and makes it statistically less likely to happen.

The same thing is true in your business or with your specific goal.

If you have 3 activities or habits driving you toward a goal, chances are you’ll get there faster.

If you don’t arrive faster, you’ll at least increase the likelihood of success.

For example, if we were looking at a sales goal again, your consistency chains might look something like this.

Sales Goal: To get X sales per month

Chain #1: Make 25 cold calls per day
Chain #2: Create 1 piece of content for social media per day
Chain #3: Send 20 pieces of direct mail per day to targeted list.

All these chains are relevant to the same goal.

So they increase the likelihood and speed that you will get to your target goal.

Conclusion

There you have it. A detailed process and plan to create more consistency in any area you want.

This plan will work for you, especially if you can get the flywheel going by having a few days of consistency to build momentum.

Just remember that this is a process and system for consistency.

This post isn’t a hodgepodge of random ideas like “101 ways to be more consistent” and you pick what you like and leave the rest.

It’s a step-by-step formula for consistency and ALL the parts are equally important.

  1. Create SMART Goals
  2. Write Your Goals Down
  3. Track Activity, Not Outcomes
  4. Use The Consistency Chain Hack
  5. Once the Chain is Broken… Immediately Begin Tracking Stats
  6. Reinforce Your Consistency Chain with the Multiple Cords Strategy

Start with the first part of the formula and go through it step by step.

Your consistency in the area you’re trying to grow in will increase dramatically.

More importantly… your confidence will go up, you’ll reach your goals faster, and you’ll increase your chances of massive success.

I hope this helps you be more consistent in an area of your life and helps you reach at least one goal.

When it does, I would love to hear your story.

And Remember…
If Nothing Changes… Nothing Changes

Click here to start a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Jason & Daniele

P.S – If you’d like to master consistency and create residual income at the same time by starting a home based business, consider contacting us to see if we’d be a fit for you.

Just a few people being consistent in a binary compensation plan can catapult you to solid (and consistent) residual income.